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Early morning chaos as we tried to keep the spinning plates of toddler, baby and dog all spinning between the two of us (my wife gamely attempted to do all three for a while to allow me a mini lie-in). It felt like we’d bitten off more than we could chew and then tried to resolve that issue by biting off some more and hoping the extra bitten off bit would somehow force the first unchewed bit down our throats anyway. Which would still leave us with a mouthful of bite that we couldn’t chew. We really haven’t thought this through.
And it had been a disturbed night of sleep for the newest Herring so all this was happening in the fug of being caught between sleep and wakefulness and no longer being able to discern which was which. Hey, what if what we think of as being awake is actually the dream and the dreams are the reality. I have just blown your minds, haven’t I? Which is annoying, because if this is the dream then it’s actually your subconscious that came up with that idea and I can take no credit. I thought I was so clever.
Phoebe had her gym class at 9.15 and Wolfie was refusing to come in from the garden (if we’d had time to train the dog before the baby arrived this would have been a lot easier, but she still largely does what she wants and thinks that me trying to get her into the kitchen is a game or a trap), Phoebe was refusing to put on her coat and pulled away from me and fell over and banged her head.
In the end we arrived five minutes late for the lesson, with me looking like I’d been pulled through a hedge backwards, but then pulled back through it forwards. So that I was nearly the same as before I was pulled through the hedge, but with a few bits of twig in my hair.
I actually did have some breakfast in my hair (the good thing about being a dad in his fifties is you can blame stuff like this on your kids, but I am fairly sure I had no assistance from them) and hadn’t showered and didn’t really remember the half hour drive to get here. Goodness knows what the other adults thought of this strange, smelly old man in their midst. I hope they forgave me. I assume they had been there themselves at some point. Or maybe we were all drunk on tiredness and didn’t notice each other’s stink as it was masked by our own.
Hopefully things will calm down as we get more used to this self-inflicted juggling act. At the moment I don’t have any work to do, but I am not sure how I will manage when I have to.
